How to copy files that have too long of a filepath in Windows?

Question

I need to make backups of some files on a network share. However, I need to copy those files to my local drive before burning the disks because those files might be in use. Some of the files won't copy because the file path is too long. Is there any workaround other than changing the file structure?

Answer 1

Maximum path length is 260 in Windows Vista/7. I can recommend three solutions:

• (if the path is too long) First copy the folder to upper levels in windows explorer and then move it to your local computer
• (if file names are too long) First try to zip/rar/7z them with an archive application and then copy the archive file to your local computer and then extract the contents.
• Use third party apps.

All of these suggestions assume you have some sort of write access on the network shared folder/computer. If you can't do any of these then you might need help from your administrator.

Answer 2

robocopy /E source destination

Robust File and Folder Copy.

Answer 3

It's not free as quoted, I tried. It's actually quite expensive unless you are going to make very regular use of it. Mine was a one off.

LONG PATH Tool, a tool to overcome this problem, is free and offers lifetime updates for free.

Windows Explorer/FAR would fail to copy/delete/rename any pathname longer than 256 characters (PATH TOO LONG error). Our program LONG PATH Tool can handle pathnames of any length, up to the internal Windows limit of 32,000 characters.

Answer 4

How does this suit you.

In Regedit browse to this folder
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

and set the following value to 0
NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation